Category: Data and research

  • The pipeline for women education leaders is broken. They need real systems of support and sponsorship

    The pipeline for women education leaders is broken. They need real systems of support and sponsorship

    by Julia Rafal-Baer, The Hechinger Report
    February 3, 2026

    In matters both big and small, women in education leadership are treated, spoken to and viewed differently than their male colleagues. And it impacts everything from their assignments and salaries to promotions. 

    The career moves available to aspiring women leaders often set them up to lead in the toughest conditions in schools and districts with the highest stakes and the least margin for error. When states and districts fail to confront the reality of this glass cliff, they constrain the advancement of some of their most capable current and would-be leaders.  

    New survey data from the nonprofit I founded, Women Leading Ed, illuminates the experiences and perspectives of women who confront the bias that creates and reinforces both the glass cliff and the glass ceiling. And research on women in education leadership points to the same conclusion: The gender gap will persist unless states and districts make systemic changes to how leaders are recruited, trained, supported and advanced through the career ladder. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    But the glass cliff doesn’t have to be the end of the road for women in education leadership. If more leaders — women and, critically, men — take even a few steps forward, we can build a bridge to a future in which every leader can reach their full potential.  

    Here are four ways: 

    Sponsorship and Coaching. Women in education leadership need real systems of support, with a shift from mentoring to sponsorship. This calls for both women and men to take an active role in advancing up-and-coming leaders, at all stages, who can benefit from on-the-job coaching.  

    Sponsorship and coaching relationships can be game changers, the data from our 2025 Women Leading Ed insight survey found. What’s more, they provide excellent opportunities for men to become allies in advancing gender equality. 

    Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell, the superintendent emeritus of schools in Oakland, recently recalled having a male coach when she started out. He served as a coach and sponsor, helping her connect to other superintendents.  

    “This man coached me for two years every Friday,” Johnson-Trammell recounted. “He helped me and pushed me to be the leader I wanted to be as a Black woman. … His sponsorship helped open up doors to accessing people, it helped me to connect to other superintendents.” 

    Promotion and Hiring. If we want different results, we have to change the systems of evaluation, promotion and hiring. That means recruiting beyond the usual networks, building hiring committees with varied viewpoints and training decision-makers to use structured processes and consistent criteria.  

    One example: Having a finalist pool with just two women candidates made it 79 times more likely that a woman would be hired than if there was just one candidate, research published in the Harvard Business Review found.  

    More broadly, the existing education leadership pipeline continues to disadvantage women, data from the U.S. Department of Education shows. The 2023-24 Women Leading Ed survey results demonstrated that women are predominantly funneled toward elementary school leadership and academic pathways that keep their trajectory below the top job in the district or state.  

    Men, however, are elevated to high school principalships or district positions that include fiscal or operational roles, precisely the kind of experiences that are prioritized during superintendent search processes.  

    Our 2023-24 survey results underscored this divergence. Of respondents who had been principals, fewer than 20 percent had served in a high school. Overall, just over one in 20 respondents had held a finance or operations role.  

    One respondent, a senior leader in a large urban school district, captured the bias of the skewed leadership pipeline succinctly: “I was told I’m too petite to be anything but an elementary principal,” she wrote.  

    Supports and Benefits. District and state leaders can transform who advances and leads their systems by providing systems of support for women in leadership and fostering fairer hiring and promotion decisions. 

    Family and well-being supports that sustain all leaders are essential to advance more women leaders. These include parental leave, child care, elder care time and scheduling flexibility.  

    Rising to a top district leadership position comes with costs for women that men typically do not absorb. Fully 95 percent of women superintendents believe that they must make professional sacrifices that their male colleagues do not make. 

    Some of our survey respondents reported working long hours while neglecting family, under pressure to maintain unrealistic expectations at the office. Another pointed out the additional responsibilities that women often carry in their personal lives, including the care of children or parents, attending school events and family members’ doctor appointments.  

    Related: OPINION: Women education leaders need better support and sponsorships to help catch up 

    Added pressure at work and greater responsibilities at home lead to burnout: Roughly six out of 10 respondents to our 2023-24 survey said they have thought about leaving their current position due to the stress and strain; three-quarters said they think about leaving daily, weekly or monthly.  

    Providing high-quality benefits can be a key lever for addressing these underlying gender inequalities. So can offering flexible work schedules, hybrid work arrangements and remote work options that provide elasticity in where and when work gets done.  

    Public Goals. Finally, systems, not just individuals, must be accountable. Setting public goals for increasing the number of highly qualified women serving on boards and in senior management is a start. Real accountability means tracking outcomes.  

    This should also include ensuring equal pay for equal work. About half the superintendents we surveyed in 2023-24 said they had conversations or negotiations about their salary in which they felt their gender influenced the outcome. 

    Solutions: pay-equity audits, increased transparency around compensation and the inclusion of salary ranges in job postings. These can be powerful steps toward achieving pay equality.  

    Nearly 900 bipartisan men and women leaders have signed an open letter calling for the adoption of these strategies.  

    This is a movement that is both growing and vital, as research makes clear that women continue to face a different set of rules than men in leadership. Too often, states and districts respond to the glass ceiling and glass cliff with window dressing rather than the actual reform needed to change the status quo.  

    Julia Rafal-Baer is the founder and CEO of Women Leading Ed, a national network for women in education leadership. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about women education leaders was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-women-education-leaders-support-system-sponsorship/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • When the Spanish flu upended universities, students paid the price

    When the Spanish flu upended universities, students paid the price

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    February 2, 2026

    In the fall of 1918, Edward Kidder Graham, the president of the University of North Carolina, tried to reassure anxious parents. The Spanish flu was spreading rapidly, but Graham insisted the university was doing all it could to keep students safe. Weeks later, Graham himself contracted the virus and died. His successor, Marvin Hendrix Stacy, promptly succumbed to the epidemic two months later.

    Many universities endured similar chaos during the Spanish flu, as I learned from reading a chapter in a forthcoming book on higher education, “From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed,” by sociologist and Brandeis University President Arthur Levine and University of Pennsylvania administrator Scott Van Pelt. (Disclosure: Levine was the president of Teachers College, Columbia University from 1994 to 2006, during which he launched The Hechinger Institute, the precursor to The Hechinger Report.)

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    But what really struck me was how many colleges’ experiences resembled those of the Covid-19 era. 

    During the 1918 pandemic, Harvard canceled lectures with more than 50 students. Yale shut down its campus after partial measures failed to contain the spread. Many urban colleges closed temporarily. Orientations, commencements and large public gatherings were canceled or postponed. At Iowa State University, gymnasiums were converted into makeshift hospitals as cases surged. At the University of Michigan, dormitories transformed into quarantine facilities after infirmaries overflowed.

    And then came a second wave — deadlier than the first.

    The Spanish flu ultimately killed about 675,000 Americans at a time when the U.S. population was roughly 100 million — nearly twice the proportional death rate of Covid-19, which has claimed about 1.2 million lives in a country more than three times as large. Unlike Covid, the Spanish flu struck hardest at young adults in their 20s and 30s, the very ages colleges relied on to fill their classrooms and new faculty seats. Yet, Levine argues, higher education never managed to help that generation recover — academically, socially or psychologically.

    Instead, institutions moved on.

    “We essentially aged out of it,” said Levine, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in January about higher education’s challenges. “Pretty soon the people who were home weren’t in college anymore. It’s a relatively short number of years.”

    There were innovations. In what we would now call remote learning, colleges expanded correspondence courses. In 1922, Penn State became the first institution to use radio for instruction. Female enrollment grew, particularly in nursing. 

    Related: Most college kids are taking at least one class online, even long after campuses reopened

    But there was little evidence of repair or recovery. Students who had seen their education disrupted by both World War I and the pandemic were depleted in number and altered in outlook. They would come to be known as the lost generation: disillusioned, cynical, psychologically scarred and searching for meaning in a world that had failed to make sense.

    What prevented this loss from registering as a lasting crisis was scale. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, only about 5 percent of young Americans attended college. There were far fewer colleges and universities. And higher education was not yet central to economic and social life in the way it is today. When one cohort faltered, institutions simply admitted the next. Replacement took the place of recovery.

    Still, the cultural effects were visible. Writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the lingering disillusionment of a generation shaped by war and disease. The Roaring Twenties, Levine argues, were less a sign of healing than a counterreaction that would be followed, a decade later, by the Great Depression.

    Levine doesn’t romanticize the past. “Everything I’ve read makes it sound like the Spanish flu combined with World War I may have been a harder slog,” he said in an interview. “So many lives were lost — not only students but faculty and staff. Mental health resources were primitive.”

    The parallels to the present are unsettling, but the differences may matter even more. Today, well over 60 percent of young adults attend college immediately or shortly after high school. Higher education has become a mass institution, deeply intertwined with economic mobility and social identity. And Covid did not just disrupt schooling; it imposed prolonged social isolation at a formative stage of development for teens and young adults. Levine notes that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of the pandemic from the rise of smartphones and social media, which were already reshaping how young people relate to one another.

    Enrollment declines following Covid echo those of the Spanish flu era. But replacement may no longer be a viable strategy. When higher education serves a small elite, institutions can absorb loss quietly. When it serves a majority, the consequences of disruption are broader, more visible, and harder to outrun.

    The lesson of the Spanish flu is not that young people inevitably bounce back. It is that institutions endured by waiting. A century ago, that carried limited cost. Today, with a far larger and more psychologically vulnerable young adult population, the price may be far higher.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about how the Spanish flu affected universities was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-spanish-flu-universities/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • School closures rarely save much money and often lead to test score declines

    School closures rarely save much money and often lead to test score declines

    by Mara Casey Tieken, The Hechinger Report
    February 2, 2026

    As a researcher who studies school closings and counsels local districts facing closure decisions, I know the pressures are multiple.

    Many districts are facing dropping enrollments. In some places, like Boston, rising housing costs are fueling the decline; in other, more rural, areas, dropping birthrates and a graying population are causing it.

    Lots of students who left public schools for private ones during the pandemic still have not returned, with new voucher programs fueling the exodus. As districts lose students, they also lose state funding. This, coupled with rising costs and uncertain state and federal support, has meant that many districts, including dozens in New York and Maine, have failed to pass school budgets.

    That’s why school closures may seem logical. Close schools, “right-size” districts, save money. Problem solved.

    But, oftentimes, the problem isn’t solved. Because closures usually don’t reduce staff and often incur new transportation or renovation costs, they rarely save much money. They can also lead to declines in test scores in the short term and diminished college completion and employment outcomes in the long term.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our freeweekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    Closures can lead to other problems as well. Absenteeism and behavioral issues may increase. In rural areas, students can spend upward of four hours a day on the bus, often on treacherous routes. Closures can mean job loss and shuttered businesses for local communities. The burden of closure is also unequal, disproportionately impacting Black students and low-income students.

    Unfortunately, school closures might be one of the few remaining issues with bipartisan support, with closures now being considered or enacted all over the country.

    Many are in red states. The West Virginia Board of Education, for example, just voted to close schools in six counties. When Mississippi’s legislature reconvenes this month, it will take up the issue of district consolidation, which typically leads to closures. Several thousand miles away, school boards have been closing schools across Alaska.

    But the closures are under way in blue and purple cities and states, too. New Jersey, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are considering district consolidation laws that could lead to school closures. The St. Louis Public School Board is proposing closing more than half of its 68 schools; Atlanta is closing 16. Even reliably blue New England is jumping on the closure bandwagon: Despite widespread protests, the Boston School Committee just voted to close three schools; Hartford may also debate closures in the coming months; New Hampshire is considering its own district consolidation legislation; and Democratic lawmakers in Vermont have sided with the state’s Republican governor to embrace his consolidation efforts while the tiny state grapples with its declining population.

    Ultimately, these closures are exactly what President Donald Trump is looking for. He has said little about them, but he doesn’t have to. He’s underwriting them.

    Trump’s desire to dismantle public education is clear. He has ravaged the U.S. Department of Education, moving many of its core functions to other federal departments and firing over a thousand staff. He has reduced federal oversight of public schools and used the Office for Civil Rights to drop protections for public school students. He has withheld federal funds for teacher professional development and services for English language learners. And he has created the first federal private school voucher program, at an estimated cost of up to $51 billion each year. From every front, his administration is launching a major assault on public education.

    At the same time, state and local officials are shuttering public schools: December was filled with news of closures. In fact, perhaps unwittingly, these officials — including those in blue states — may be doing just as much to undo public education as Trump is.

    We need to stop the rampant closing of schools.

    There are more reliable strategies for saving money, such as adopting service-sharing agreements that allow multiple districts to collaboratively manage and deliver key services, like transportation. Multi-grade classrooms and virtual options can relieve staffing pressures, and dual-enrollment programs can help small schools support robust curriculums. Meanwhile, states’ funding formulas are often outdated; examining those for possible cuts and expansions could also offer support to struggling districts.

    Related: Schools are closing across rural America. Here’s how a battle over small districts is playing out in one state

    In the rare cases when closures are necessary, there are better ways to close. We can use accurate data to guide planning, involve local communities in closure decisions and repurpose school buildings as community centers or preschools. We can close more judiciously, keeping schools in low-income and Black communities — the places that states most often neglect.

    We also need policies that address the root causes of closure: not only privatization and federal defunding, but also gentrification, economic restructuring and growing inequality.

    Right now, many Democrats and education advocates are just holding their breath, hoping that a new administration in a few years will quickly reverse Trump’s devastating education policies.

    But they might wake up on the next Inauguration Day and find that, even with a new administration ready to revive public education, there are few public schools left to resuscitate.

    Mara Casey Tieken is a professor of education at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She is the author of “Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them” and “Why Rural Schools Matter.”

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about school closures was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-shuttering-public-schools-is-a-strategy-that-rarely-saves-much-money-and-often-leads-to-test-score-declines/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • The debate over AI in education is stuck. Let’s move it forward in responsible ways that truly serve students

    The debate over AI in education is stuck. Let’s move it forward in responsible ways that truly serve students

    by Maddy Sims, The Hechinger Report
    January 29, 2026

    Artificial intelligence is already reshaping how we work, communicate and create. In education, however, the conversation is stuck.

    Sensational headlines make it seem like AI will either save public education (“AI will magically give teachers back hours in their day!”) or destroy it completely (“Students only use AI to cheat!” “AI will replace teachers!”).

    These dueling narratives dominate public debate as state and district leaders scramble to write policies, field vendor pitches and decide whether to ban or embrace tools that often feel disconnected from what teachers and students actually experience in classrooms.

    What gets lost is the fundamental question of what learning should look like in a world in which AI is everywhere. And that is why, last year, rather than debate whether AI belongs in schools, approximately 40 policymakers and sector leaders took stock of the roadblocks in an education system designed for a different era and wrestled with what it would take to move forward responsibly.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    The group included educators, researchers, funders, parent advocates and technology experts and was convened by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. What emerged from the three-day forum was a clearer picture of where the field is stuck and a shared recognition of how common assumptions are holding leaders back and of what a more coherent, human-centered approach to AI could look like.

    We agreed that there are several persistent myths derailing conversations about AI in education, and came up with shifts for combating them.

    Myth #1: AI’s biggest value is saving time for teachers

    Teachers are overburdened, and many AI tools promise relief through faster lesson planning, automated grading or instant feedback. These uses matter, but forum participants were clear that efficiency alone will not transform education.

    Focusing too narrowly on time savings risks locking schools more tightly into systems that were never designed to prepare students for the world they are graduating into.

    The deeper issue isn’t how to use AI to save time. It’s how to create a shared vision for what high-quality, future-ready learning should actually look like. Without that clarity, even the best tools quietly reinforce the same factory-model structures educators are already struggling against.

    The shift: Stop asking what AI can automate. Start asking what kinds of learning experiences students deserve, and how AI might help make those possible.

    Myth #2: The main challenge is getting the right AI tools into classrooms

    The education technology market is already crowded, and AI has only added to the noise. Teachers are often left stitching together core curricula, supplemental programs, tutoring services and now AI tools with little guidance.

    Forum participants pushed back on the idea that better tools alone will solve this problem. The real challenge, they argued, is to align how learning is designed and experienced in schools — and the policies meant to support that work — with the skills students need to thrive in an AI-shaped world. An app is not a learning model. A collection of tools does not add up to a strategy.

    Yet this is not only a supply-side problem. Educators, policymakers and funders have struggled to clearly articulate what they need amid a rapidly advancing technology environment.

    The shift: Define coherent learning models first. Evaluate AI tools based on whether they reinforce shared goals and integrate with one another to support consistent teaching and learning practices, not whether they are novel or efficient on their own.

    Myth #3: Leaders must choose between fixing today’s schools and inventing new models

    One of the tensions dominating the discussions was whether scarce state, local and philanthropic resources should be used to improve existing schools or to build entirely new models of learning.

    Some participants worried that using AI to personalize lessons or improve tutoring simply props up systems that no longer work. Others emphasized the moral urgency of improving conditions for students in classrooms right now.

    Rather than resolving this debate, participants rejected the false choice. They argued for an “ambidextrous” approach: improving teaching and learning in the present while intentionally laying the groundwork for fundamentally different models in the future.

    The shift: Leaders must ensure they do not lose sight of today’s students or of tomorrow’s possibilities. Wherever possible, near-term pilot programs should help build knowledge about broader redesign.

    Myth #4: AI strategy is mainly a technical or regulatory challenge

    Many states and districts have focused AI efforts on acceptable-use policies. Creating guardrails certainly matters, but when compliance eclipses learning and redesign, it creates a chilling effect, and educators don’t feel safe to experiment.

    The shift: Policy should build in flexibility for learning and iteration in service of new models, not just act as a brake pedal to combat bad behavior.

    Myth #5: AI threatens the human core of education

    Perhaps the most powerful reframing the group came up with: The real risk isn’t that AI will replace human relationships in schools. It’s that education will fail to define and protect what is most human.

    Participants consistently emphasized belonging, purpose, creativity, critical thinking and connection as essential outcomes in an AI-shaped world.

    But they will be fostered only if human-centered design is intentional, not assumed.

    The shift: If AI use doesn’t support students’ connections between their learning, their lives and their futures, it won’t be transformative, no matter how advanced the technology.

    The group’s participants did not produce a single blueprint for the future of education, but they came away with a shared recognition that efficiency won’t be enough, tools alone won’t save us and fear won’t guide the field.

    Related: In a year that shook the foundations of education research, these 10 stories resonated in 2025

    The question is no longer whether AI will shape education. It is whether educators, communities and policymakers will look past the headlines and seize this moment to shape AI’s role in ways that truly serve students now and in the future.

    Maddy Sims is a senior fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), where she leads projects focused on studying and strengthening innovation in education.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about AI in education was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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  • OPINION: Colleges need to recruit more men, but Trump’s policies are making it difficult

    OPINION: Colleges need to recruit more men, but Trump’s policies are making it difficult

    by Catharine Hill, The Hechinger Report
    January 20, 2026

    While attending a gathering of Ivy League women years ago, I upset the audience by commenting that a real challenge for U.S. higher education was the declining participation of men in higher education, not just the glass ceiling and unequal pay faced by women.  

    At the time, I was president of Vassar College (which did not become co-ed until 1969). We surveyed newly admitted students as well as first-year students and learned that the majority expressed a preference for a gender-balanced student body, with as co-educational an environment as possible.  

    With fewer men applying, that meant admitting them at a higher rate, something some other selective colleges and universities were already doing. While, historically, men were much more likely to attain a college degree than women, that changed by 1980. For more than four decades now, the number of women on campuses has surpassed the number of men.  

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    These days, 27 percent more women than men age 25 to 34 have earned a bachelor’s degree, according to the Pew Research Center. Aiming for greater gender balance, some colleges and universities have put a “thumb on the scale” to admit and matriculate more men.  

    But the end of affirmative action, along with the Trump administration’s statements warning schools against considering gender identity (or race, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation and religious associations) in admissions, could end this preference. 

    To be clear, I believe that the goal of admissions preferences, including for men, should be to increase overall educational attainment, not to advantage one group over another. Economic and workforce development should be a top higher education priority, because many high-demand and well-paying jobs require a college degree. America should therefore be focused on increasing educational attainment because it is important to our global competitiveness. And the selective schools that have high graduation rates should give a preference to students who are underrepresented in higher education — including men — because it will get more Americans to and through college and benefit our economy and society.  

    Preferencing students from groups with lower overall educational attainment also helps colleges meet their own goals.  

    For schools that admit just about all comers, attracting more men — through changes in recruitment strategies, adjustments in curricula and programs to support retention — is part of a strategy to sustain enrollment in the face of the demographic cliff (the declining number of American 18-year-olds resulting from the drop in the birth rate during the Great Recession) and declining international applicants due to the administration’s policies.  

    Colleges that don’t admit nearly all applicants have a different goal: balancing the share of men and women because it helps them compete for students.  

    Selective schools don’t really try to admit more men to serve the public good of increasing overall educational attainment. They believe the students they are trying to attract prefer a co-educational experience. 

    We are living in a global economy that rewards talent. When selective colleges take more veterans, lower-income students and students from rural areas and underrepresented groups, the chance of these students graduating increases. That increases the talent pool, helping to meet employer demand for workers with bachelor’s degrees.  

    The U.S. has been slipping backward in education compared to our peers for several decades. To reverse this trend, we need to get more of our population through college. The best way to do this is by targeting populations with lower educational attainment, including men. But by adding gender to the list of characteristics that should not be considered in admissions decisions, the Trump administration is telling colleges and universities to take the thumb off the scale for men.  

    I suspect this was unintended or resulted from a misunderstanding of who has actually been getting a preference in the admissions process, and in assuming incorrectly that women and/or nonbinary applicants have benefited.  

    Over the last 15 years or more, some attributes, including academic performance, have likely been traded off in order to admit more men. How big these trade-offs have been has differed from college to college and will be hard to calculate, given all the student characteristics that are considered in making admissions decisions.  

    I’m in favor of making these trade-offs to contribute to improved overall educational attainment in America.  

    But given the Trump administration’s lumping of gender with race, college and university policies intended to attract men will now face the same legal challenges that affirmative action policies aimed at improving educational attainment and fairness face.  

    Differential admit rates will be scrutinized. Even if the administration doesn’t challenge these trade-offs, rejected women applicants may seek changes through the courts and otherwise, just as happened with regard to race.  

    Related: Trump’s attacks on DEI may hurt men in college admission  

    Admitting male athletes could also unintentionally be at risk. If low-income has become a “proxy” for race, then athletic admits could become “proxies” for men. (Some schools have publicly stated that they were primarily introducing football to attract male applicants.) 

    Colleges and universities, including selective ones, are heavily subsidized by federal, state and local governments because they have historically been perceived as serving the public good, contributing to equal opportunity and strengthening our economy.  

    Admissions decisions should be evaluated on these grounds, with seats at the selective schools allocated according to what will most contribute to the public good, including improving our nation’s talent pool.  

    Targeting populations with lower-than-average college-going rates will help accomplish this. That includes improving access and success for all underserved groups, including men.  

    Unfortunately, the current administration’s policies are working directly against this and are likely to worsen educational attainment in America and our global competitiveness.  

    Catharine “Cappy” Hill is the former managing director of Ithaka S+R and former president of Vassar College. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about men and college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

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  • Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    Trump’s admissions data collection strains college administrators

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    January 19, 2026

    Lynette Duncan didn’t expect to spend 20 hours over the past two weeks digging through a mothballed computer system, trying to retrieve admissions data from 2019.

    Duncan is the director of institutional research at John Brown University, a small Christian university in northwest Arkansas, an hour’s drive from Walmart’s headquarters. She runs a one-person office that handles university data collections and analyses, both for internal use and to meet government mandates. Just last year, she spent months collecting and crunching new data to comply with a new federal rule requiring that colleges show that their graduates are prepared for good jobs.

    Then, in mid-December, another mandate abruptly arrived — this one at the request of President Donald Trump. Colleges were ordered to compile seven years of admissions data, broken down by race, sex, grades, SAT or ACT scores, and family income.

    “It’s like one more weight on our backs,” Duncan said. “The workload – it’s not fun.”

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    John Brown University is one of almost 2,200 colleges and universities nationwide now scrambling to comply by March 18 with the new federal reporting requirement, formally known as the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS. By all accounts, it’s a ton of work, and at small institutions, the task falls largely on a single administrator or even the registrar. Failure to submit the data can bring steep fines and, ultimately, the loss of access to federal aid for students.

    After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, the Trump administration suspected that colleges might covertly continue to give racial preferences. To police compliance, the White House directed the Department of Education to collect detailed admissions data from colleges nationwide.

    The data collection was unusual not only in its scope, but also in its speed. Federal education data collections typically take years to design, with multiple rounds of analysis, technical review panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months.

    A rush job

    One tiny indication that this was a rush job is in the Federal Register notice. Both enforce and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. Those words are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” 

    A December filing with the Office of Management and Budget incorrectly lists the number of institutions that are subject to the new data collection. It is nearly 2,200, not 1,660, according to the Association for Institutional Research, which is advising colleges on how to properly report the data. Community colleges are exempt, but four-year institutions with selective admissions or those that give out their own financial aid must comply. Graduate programs are included as well. That adds up to about 2,200 institutions. 

    Related: Inaccurate, impossible: Experts knock new Trump plan to collect college admissions data

    In another filing with the Office of Management and Budget, the administration disclosed that none of the five remaining career Education Department officials with statistical experience had reviewed the proposal, including Matt Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Most of the department’s statistical staff were fired earlier this year as a first step to eliminating the Education Department, one of Trump’s campaign promises. RTI International, the federal contractor in North Carolina that already manages other higher education data collections for the Education Department, is also handling the day-to-day work of this new college admissions collection. 

    During two public comment periods, colleges and higher-education trade groups raised concerns about data quality and missing records, but there is little evidence those concerns substantially altered the final design. One change expanded the retrospective data requirement from five to six years so that at least one cohort of students would have a measurable six-year graduation rate. A second relieved colleges of the burden of making hundreds of complex statistical calculations themselves, instead instructing them to upload raw student data to an “aggregator tool” that would do all the math for them. 

    The Trump administration’s goal is to generate comparisons across race and sex categories, with large gaps potentially triggering further scrutiny.

    Missing data

    The results are unlikely to be reliable, experts told me, given how much of the underlying data is missing or incomplete. In a public comment letter, Melanie Gottlieb, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, warned that entire years of applicant data may not exist at many institutions. Some states advise colleges to delete records for applicants who never enrolled after a year. “If institutions are remaining compliant with their state policies, they will not have five years of data,” Gottlieb wrote.

    The organization’s own guidance recommends that four-year colleges retain admissions records for just one year after an application cycle. One reason is privacy. Applicant files contain sensitive personal information, and purging unneeded records reduces the risk of exposing this data in breaches.

    In other cases, especially at smaller institutions, admissions offices may offload applicant data simply to make room for new student records. Duncan said John Brown University has all seven years of required data, but a switch to a new computer system in 2019 has made it difficult to retrieve the first year.

    Even when historical records are available, key details may be missing or incompatible with federal requirements, said Christine Keller, executive director of the Association for Institutional Research, which previously received a federal contract to train college administrators on accurate data collection until DOGE eliminated it. (The organization now receives some private funds for a reduced amount of training.) 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Standardized test scores are unavailable for many students admitted under test-optional policies. The department is asking colleges to report an unweighted grade-point average on a four-point scale, even though many applicants submit only weighted GPAs on a five-point scale. In those cases, and there may be many of them, colleges are instructed to report the GPA as “unknown.”

    Some students decline to report their race. Many holes are expected for family income. Colleges generally have income data only for students who completed federal financial-aid forms, which many applicants never file. 

    Ellen Keast, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said in an email, “Schools are not expected to provide data they don’t have.” She added, “We know that some schools may have missing data for some data elements. We’ll review the extent of missing data before doing further calculations or analyses.”

    Male or female

    Even the category of sex poses problems. The Education Department’s spreadsheet allows only two options: male or female. Colleges, however, may collect sex or gender information using additional categories, such as nonbinary. 

    “That data is going to be, in my estimation, pretty worthless when it comes to really showing the different experiences of men and women,” Keller said. She is urging the department to add a “missing” option to avoid misleading results. “I think some people in the department may be misunderstanding that what’s needed is a missing-data option, not another sex category.”

    The new “aggregator tool” itself is another source of anxiety. Designed to spare colleges from calculating quintile buckets for grades and test scores by race and sex, it can feel like a black box. Colleges are supposed to fill rows and rows of detailed student data into spreadsheets and then upload the spreadsheets into the tool. The tool generates pooled summary statistics, such as the number of Black female applicants and admitted students who score in the top 20 percent at the college. Only the aggregated data will be reported to the federal government.

    At John Brown University, Duncan worries about what those summaries might imply. Her institution is predominantly white and has never practiced affirmative action. But if high school grades or test scores differ by race — as they often do nationwide — the aggregated results could suggest bias where none was intended.

    “That’s a concern,” Duncan said. “I’m hopeful that looking across multiple years of data, it won’t show that. You could have an anomaly in one year.”

    The problem is that disparities are not anomalies. Standardized test scores and academic records routinely vary by race and sex, making it difficult for almost any institution to avoid showing gaps.

    A catch-22 for colleges

    The stakes are high. In an emailed response to my questions, the Education Department pointed to Trump’s Aug. 7 memorandum, which directs the agency to take “remedial action” if colleges fail to submit the data on time or submit incomplete or inaccurate information.

    Under federal law, each violation of these education data-reporting requirements can carry a fine of up to $71,545. Repeated noncompliance can ultimately lead to the loss of access to federal student aid, meaning students could no longer use Pell Grants or federal loans to pay tuition.

    That leaves colleges in a bind. Failing to comply is costly. Complying, meanwhile, could produce flawed data that suggests bias and invites further scrutiny.

    The order itself contradicts another administration goal. President Trump campaigned on reducing federal red tape and bureaucratic burden. Yet ACTS represents a significant expansion of paperwork for colleges. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that each institution will spend roughly 200 hours completing the survey this year — a figure that higher-education officials say may be an understatement.

    Duncan is hoping she can finish the reporting in less than 200 hours, if there are no setbacks when she uploads the data. “If I get errors, it could take double the time,” she said.

    For now, she is still gathering and cleaning old student records and waiting to see the results… all before the March 18 deadline.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about college admissions data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • The time to prepare young people for a future shaped by computer science is during middle school

    The time to prepare young people for a future shaped by computer science is during middle school

    by Jim Ryan, The Hechinger Report
    January 19, 2026

    The future of work will demand fluency in both science and technology. From addressing climate change to designing ethical AI systems, tomorrow’s challenges will require interdisciplinary thinkers who can navigate complex systems and harness the power of computation. 

    And that is why we can’t wait until high school or college to integrate computer science into general science. 

    The time to begin is during middle school, that formative period when students begin to shape their identities, interests and aspirations. If schools want to prepare young people for a future shaped by technology, they must act now to ensure that computer science is not a privilege for a few but a foundation for all. 

    The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts more than 300,000 computer science job openings every year through 2034 — a rate of growth that far outpaces most other sectors. Yet despite this demand, in 2024, only about 37 percent of public middle schools reported offering computer science coursework. 

    This gap is more than a statistic — it’s a warning sign that the U.S. technology sector will be starved for the workforce it needs to thrive.  

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    One innovative way to close this gap is by integrating computer science into the general science curriculum at every middle school. This approach doesn’t require additional class periods or separate electives. Instead — by using computational thinking and digital tools to develop student understanding of real-world scientific phenomena — it reimagines how we teach science. 

    Science and computer science are already deeply interconnected in the real world. Scientists use computational models to simulate climate systems, analyze genetic data and design experiments. And computer scientists often draw inspiration from biology, physics and chemistry to develop algorithms and solve complex problems, such as by modeling neural networks after the brain’s architecture and simulating quantum systems for cryptography. 

    Teaching these disciplines together helps students see how both science and computer science are applicable and relevant to their lives and society.  

    Integrating computer science into middle school science instruction also addresses long-standing equity issues. When computer science is offered only as a separate elective, access often depends on prior exposure, school funding and parental advocacy. This creates barriers for students from underrepresented backgrounds, who may never get the chance to discover their interests or talents in computing.  

    Embedding computer science into core science classes helps to ensure that every student — regardless of zip code, race or gender — can build foundational skills in computing and see themselves as empowered problem-solvers. 

    Teachers must be provided the tools and support to make this a reality. Namely, schools should have access to middle school science curriculums that have computer science concepts directly embedded in the instruction. Such units don’t teach coding in isolation — they invite students to customize the sensors that collect data, simulate systems and design coded solutions to real-world problems. 

    For example, students can use computer science to investigate the question: “Why does contact between objects sometimes but not always cause damage, and how can we protect against damage?”  

    Students can also use sensors and programming to develop solutions to measure the forces of severe weather. In doing so, they’re not just learning science and computer science — they’re learning how to think like scientists and engineers. 

    Related: The path to a career could start in middle school 

    Integrating general science with computer science doesn’t require more instructional time. It simply requires us to consider how we can use computer science to efficiently investigate the science all students already study. 

    Rather than treating computer science as an add-on, we can weave it into the fabric of how students investigate, analyze and design.  

    This approach will not only deepen their understanding of scientific concepts but also build transferable skills in logic, creativity and collaboration. 

    Students need to start learning computer science earlier in their education, and we need to start in the science classroom by teaching these skills in middle school. To ensure that today’s students grow into tomorrow’s innovators and problem-solvers, we must treat computer science as foundational, not optional. 

    Jim Ryan is the executive director of OpenSciEd. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about computer science in middle school was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

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  • Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It’s not that simple

    Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It’s not that simple

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    January 12, 2026

    Conservatives have long argued that unwed motherhood and single parenting are major drivers of poor student achievement. They contend that traditional two-parent families — ideally with a married mother and father — provide the stability children need to succeed in school. Single-parent households, more common among low-income families, are blamed for weak academic outcomes.

    That argument has resurfaced prominently in Project 2025, a policy blueprint developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation that calls for the federal government to collect and publish more education data broken out by family structure.

    Project 2025 acknowledges that the Education Department already collects some of this data, but asserts that it doesn’t make it public. That’s not true, though you need expertise to extract it. When I contacted the Heritage Foundation, the organization responded that the family-structure data should still be “readily available” to a layman, just like student achievement by race and sex. Fair point.

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    With some help, I found the figures and the results complicate the conservative claim.

    Since 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the Nation’s Report Card, has asked students about who lives in their home. While the question does not capture every family arrangement, the answers provide a reasonable, albeit imperfect, proxy for family structure and it allows the public to examine how a nationally representative sample of students from different types of households perform academically. 

    I wanted to look at the relationship between family structure and student achievement by family income. Single-parent families are far more common in low-income communities and I didn’t want to conflate achievement gaps by income with achievement gaps by family structure. For example, 43 percent of low-income eighth graders live with only one parent compared with 13 percent of their high-income peers. I wanted to know whether kids who live with only one parent perform worse than kids with the same family income who live with both parents.

    To analyze the most recent data from the 2024 NAEP exam, I used the NAEP Data Explorer, a public tool developed by testing organization ETS for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). I told an ETS researcher what I wanted to know and he showed me how to generate the cross-tabulations, which I then replicated independently across four tests: fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math. Finally, I vetted the results with a former senior official at NCES and with a current staff member at the governing board that oversees the NAEP assessment.

    The analysis reveals a striking pattern.

    Among low-income students, achievement differs little by family structure. Fourth- and eighth-grade students from low-income households score at roughly the same level whether they live with both parents or with only one parent. Two-parent households do not confer a measurable academic advantage in this group. Fourth-grade reading is a great example. Among the socioeconomic bottom third of students, those who live with both parents scored a 199. Those who live with just mom scored 200. The results are almost identical and, if anything, a smidge higher for the kids of single moms. 

    As socioeconomic status rises, however, differences by family structure become more pronounced. Among middle- and high-income students, those living with both parents tend to score higher than their peers living with only one parent. The gap is largest among the most affluent students. In fourth grade reading, for example, higher-income kids who live with both parents scored a 238, a whopping 10 points higher than their peers who live with only their moms. Experts argue over the meaning of a NAEP point, but some equate 10 NAEP points to a school year’s worth of learning. It’s substantial.

    Family structure matters less for low-income student achievement

    Still, it’s better to be rich in a single-parent household than poor in a two-parent household. High-income students raised by a single parent substantially outperform low-income students who live with both parents by at least 20 points, underscoring that money and the advantages it brings — such as access to resources, stable housing, and educational support — matter far more than household composition alone. In other words, income far outweighs family structure when it comes to student achievement.

    Despite the NAEP data, Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the center for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, stands by the contention that family structure matters greatly for student outcomes. He points out that research since the landmark Coleman report of 1966 has consistently found a relationship between the two. Most recently, in a 2022 American Enterprise Institute-Brookings report, 15 scholars concluded that children “raised in stable, married-parent families are more likely to excel in school, and generally earn higher grade point averages” than children who are not. Two recent books, Brad Wilcox’s “Get Married” (2024) and Melissa Kearney’s “The Two-Parent Privilege” (2023), make the case, too, and they point out that children raised by married parents are about twice as likely to graduate from college as children who are not. However, it’s unclear to me if all of this analysis has disaggregated student achievement by family income as I did with the NAEP data.

    Related: Trump administration makes good on many Project 2025 education goals

    Family structure is a persistent theme for conservatives. Just last week the Heritage Foundation released a report on strengthening and rebuilding U.S. families. In a July 2025 newsletter, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote that “the most effective intervention in education is not another literacy coach or SEL program. It’s dad.” He cited a June 2025 report, “Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids,” by scholars and advocates. (Disclosure: A group led by one of the authors of this report, Richard Reeves, is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)

    That conclusion is partially supported by the NAEP data, but only for a relatively small share of students from higher-income families (The share of high-income children living with only their mother ranges between 7 and 10 percent. The single-parent rate is higher for eighth graders than for fourth graders.)  For low-income students, who are Pondiscio’s and the scholars’ main concern, it’s not the case. 

    The data has limitations. The NAEP survey does not distinguish among divorced families, grandparent-led households or same-sex parents. Joint custody arrangements are likely grouped with two-parent households because children may say that they live with both mother and father, if not at the same time. Even so, these nuances are unlikely to alter the core finding: For low-income students, academic outcomes are largely similar regardless of whether they live with both parents all of the time, some of the time or only live with one parent. 

    The bottom line is that calls for new federal data collection by family structure, like those outlined in Project 2025, may not reveal what advocates expect. A family’s bank account matters more than a wedding ring. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about family structure and student achievement was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math

    Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    January 5, 2026

    Students, parents and school principals all instinctively know that some teachers are better than others. Education researchers have spent decades trying — with mixed success — to calculate exactly how much better.

    What remains far more elusive is why.

    A new study suggests that one surprisingly simple difference between stronger and weaker math teachers may be how often they use mathematical vocabulary, words such as “factors,” “denominators” and “multiples,” in class.

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Teachers who used more math vocabulary had students who scored higher on math tests, according to a team of data scientists and education researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Maryland. The size of the test score boost was substantial. It amounted to about half of the benefit researchers typically attribute to having a highly effective teacher, which is among the most important school-based factors that help children learn. Students with highly effective teachers can end up months ahead of their peers. 

    “If you’re looking for a good math teacher, you’re probably looking for somebody who’s exposing their students to more mathematical vocabulary,” said Harvard data scientist Zachary Himmelsbach, lead author of the study, which was published online in November 2025.

    The finding aligns with a growing body of research suggesting that language plays a critical role in math learning. A 2021 meta-analysis of 40 studies found that students with stronger math vocabularies tend to perform better in math, particularly on multi-step, complex problems. Understanding what a “radius” is, for example, can make it more efficient to talk about perimeter and area and understand geometric concepts. Some math curricula explicitly teach vocabulary and include glossaries to reinforce these terms.

    Related: Three reasons why so few eighth graders in the poorest schools take algebra

    But vocabulary alone is unlikely to be a magic ingredient.

    “If a teacher just stood in front of the classroom and recited lists of mathematical vocabulary terms, nobody’s learning anything,” said Himmelsbach. 

    Instead, Himmelsbach suspects that vocabulary is part of a broader constellation of effective teaching practices. Teachers who use more math terms may also be providing clearer explanations, walking students through lots of examples step-by-step, and offering engaging puzzles. These teachers might also have a stronger conceptual understanding of math themselves.

    It’s hard to isolate what exactly is driving the students’ math learning and what role vocabulary, in and of itself, is playing, Himmelsbach said.

    Himmelsbach and his research team analyzed transcripts from more than 1,600 fourth- and fifth-grade math lessons in four school districts recorded for research purposes about 15 years ago. They counted how often teachers used more than 200 common math terms drawn from elementary math curriculum glossaries.

    The average teacher used 140 math-related words per lesson. But there was wide variation. The top quarter of the teachers used at least 28 more math terms per lesson than the quarter of the teachers who spoke the fewest math words. Over the course of a school year, that difference amounted to roughly 4,480 additional math terms, meaning that some students were exposed to far richer mathematical language than others, depending on which teacher they happened to have that year.

    The study linked these differences to student achievement. One hundred teachers were recorded over three years, and in the third year, students were randomly assigned to classrooms. That random assignment allowed the researchers to rule out the possibility that higher performing students were simply being clustered with stronger teachers.

    Related: A theory for learning numbers without counting gains popularity

    The lessons came from districts serving mostly low-income students. About two-thirds of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, more than 40 percent were Black, and nearly a quarter were Hispanic — the very populations that tend to struggle the most in math and stand to gain the most from effective instruction.

    Interestingly, student use of math vocabulary did not appear to matter as much as teacher use. Although the researchers also tracked how often students used math terms in class, they found no clear link between teachers who used more vocabulary and students who spoke more math words themselves. Exposure and comprehension, rather than verbal facility, may be enough to support stronger math performance.

    The researchers also looked for clues as to why some teachers used more math vocabulary than others. Years of teaching experience made no difference. Nor did the number of math or math pedagogy courses teachers had taken in college. Teachers with stronger mathematical knowledge did tend to use more math terms, but the relationship was modest.

    Himmelsbach suspects that personal beliefs play an important role. Some teachers, he said, worry that formal math language will confuse students and instead favor more familiar phrasing, such as “put together” instead of addition, or “take away” instead of subtraction. While those colloquial expressions can be helpful, students ultimately need to understand how they correspond to formal mathematical concepts, Himmelsbach said.

    This study is part of a new wave of education research that uses machine learning and natural language processing — computer techniques that analyze large volumes of text — to peer inside the classroom, which has long remained a black box. With enough recorded lessons, researchers hope not only to identify which teaching practices matter most, but also provide teachers with concrete, data-driven feedback.

    Related: A little parent math talk with kids might really add up

    The researchers did not examine whether teachers used math terms correctly, but they noted that future models could be trained to do just that, offering feedback on accuracy and context, not just frequency.

    For now, the takeaway is more modest but still meaningful: Students appear to learn more math when their teachers speak the language of math more often.  

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about math vocabulary was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-math-vocabulary/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Beyond DEI offices, colleges are dismantling all kinds of programs related to equity

    Beyond DEI offices, colleges are dismantling all kinds of programs related to equity

    by Jeni Hebert-Beirne, The Hechinger Report
    December 22, 2025

    It started with Harvard University. Then Notre Dame, Cornell, Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. 

    Colleges are racing to close or rename their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices, which serve as the institutional infrastructure to ensure fair opportunity and conditions for all. The pace is disorienting and getting worse: since last January, 181 colleges in all.  

    Often this comes with a formal announcement via mass email, whispering a watered-down name change that implies: “There is nothing to see here. The work will remain the same.” But renaming the offices is something to see, and it changes the work that can be done. 

    Colleges say the changes are needed to comply with last January’s White House executive orders to end “wasteful government DEI programs” and “illegal discrimination” and restore “merit-based opportunity,” prompting them to replace DEI with words like engagement, culture, community, opportunity and belonging. 

    One college went even further this month: The University of Alabama ended two student-run magazines because administrators perceived them to be targeting specific demographics and thus to be out of compliance with Attorney General Pamela Bondi’s anti-discrimination guidance. Students are fighting back while some experts say the move is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    With the one-year mark of the original disruptive executive orders approaching, the pattern of response is nearly always the same. Announcements of name changes are followed quickly by impassioned pronouncements that schools should “remain committed to our long-standing social justice mission.” 

    University administrators, faculty, students, supporters and alumni need to stand up and call attention to the risks of this widespread renaming.  

    True, there are risks to not complying. The U.S. State Department recently proposed to cut research funding to 38 elite universities in a public-private partnership for what the Trump administration perceived as DEI hiring practices. Universities removed from the partnership will be replaced by schools that the administration perceives to be more merit-based, such as Liberty University and Brigham Young University.  

    In addition to the freezing of critical research dollars, universities are being fined millions of dollars for hiring practices that use an equity lens — even though those practices are merit-based and ensure that all candidates are fairly evaluated.  

    Northwestern University recently paid $75 million to have research funding that had already been approved restored, while Columbia University paid $200 million. Make no mistake: This is extortion. 

    Some top university administrators have resigned under this pressure. Others seem to be deciding that changing the name of their equity office is cheaper than being extorted.  

    Many are clinging to the misguided notion that the name changes do not mean they are any less committed to their equity and justice-oriented missions.  

    As a long-standing faculty member of a major public university, I find this alarming. In what way does backing away from critical, specific language advance social justice missions? 

    In ceding ground on critical infrastructure that centers justice, the universities that are caving are violating a number of historian and author Timothy Snyder’s 20 lessons from the 20th century for fighting tyranny.  

    The first lesson is: “Do not obey in advance.” Many of these changes are not required. Rather, universities are making decisions to comply in advance in order to avoid potential future conflicts.  

    The second is: “Defend institutions.” The name changes and reorganizations convey that this infrastructure is not foundational to university work.  

    What Snyder doesn’t warn about is the loss of critical words that frame justice work.  

    The swift dismantling of the infrastructures that had been advancing social justice goals, especially those secured during the recent responses to racial injustice in the United States and the global pandemic, has been breathtaking.  

    Related: Trump administration cuts canceled this college student’s career start in politics 

    This is personal to me. Over the 15 years since I was hired as a professor and community health equity researcher at Chicago’s only public research institution, the university deepened its commitment to social justice by investing resources to address systemic inequities. 

    Directors were named, staff members hired. Missions were carefully curated. Funding mechanisms were announced to encourage work at the intersections of the roots of injustices. Award mechanisms were carefully worded to describe what excellence looks like in social justice work.  

    Now, one by one, this infrastructure is being deconstructed.  

    The University of Illinois Chicago leadership recently announced that the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Diversity will be renamed and reoriented as the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Engagement. The explanation noted that this change reflects a narrowed dual focus: engaging internally within the university community and externally with the City of Chicago. 

    This concept of university engagement efforts as two sides of one coin oversimplifies the complexity of the authentic, reciprocal relationship development required by the university to achieve equity goals.  

    As a community engagement scientist, I feel a major loss and unsettling alarm from the renaming of “Equity and Diversity” as “Engagement.” I’ve spent two decades doing justice-centered, community-based participatory research in Chicago neighborhoods with community members. It is doubtful that the work can remain authentic if administrators can’t stand up enough to keep the name. 

    As a professor of public health, I train graduate students on the importance of language and naming. For example, people in low-income neighborhoods are not inherently “at risk” for poor health but rather are exposed to conditions that impact their risk level and defy health equity. Health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,” while health equity is “the state in which everyone has the chance to attain full health potential.” Changing the emphasis from health equity to health focuses the system’s lens on the individual and mutes population impact.  

    Similarly, changing the language around DEI offices is a huge deal. It is the beginning of the end. Pretending it is not is complicity.  

    Jeni Hebert-Beirne is a professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health and a public voices fellow of The OpEd Project. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about colleges and DEI was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-colleges-are-not-just-saying-goodbye-to-dei-offices-they-are-dismantling-programs-that-assure-institutional-commitment-to-justice/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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